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Author
Topic: Healthcare advice (Read 1168 times)

I am 1 year into being diagnosed with HIV. I work for a small company that provides my health insurance and all of my premiums (Thank the Lord). Our company reviews the policies every year and shops around for cheaper plans, etc.. This is suppose to happen in the month of June therefore I'm worried about a couple of things:

1. If during the review process and renewal the premiums come back high will they be able to pin point it to me because of my disease?2. There have been other major illnesses within our office, i.e. kidney surgery, etc. Am I considered high risk patient since the disease is technically manageable? 3. Will we be lumped into a high risk pool of other insurances and therefore I won't have to disclose my illness and the premiums for the entire office as a whole won't become so outrageous that we get dropped.

The reason for my concerns are that if we do get dropped due to my stupidity then will i be able to get covered since I have a preexisting condition and if I understand the new laws I would have to go without insurance for 6 months to qualify as high risk preexisting.

As you can tell I'm WORRIED and totally confused about health care and my options. Any advice would be appreciated.

First of all, it isn't you that is confused. The law is pretty confusing. Plus it is in a state of flux at the federal level and varies from state to state.

As far as you being pinpointed as having HIV -- the insurance company can tell your employer what medical conditions are making the insurance costs go up. But they are not supposed to tell your employer who has which condition. That is federal law -- true in all states.

We can't know in advance whether your company will continue to buy insurance. Depending on the state you live in the options available to your company will be different. But in most states it is a matter of cost rather than ability of the company to find any insurance. So to help with the cost issue you should make sure that your company is aware that there is help coming to make it easier for small companies to afford to buy health insurance. The help comes in the form of a new tax credit. It's part of the new health law and the IRS just put out some helpful information the other day. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=220809,00.html

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately since we are a company of 10 I think it will be pretty obvious who is causing the health care increase but I can't worry about that today. I have to just go one day at a time.